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The VCT 2023: Pacific League kicked off on March 25, 2023, in Seoul, South Korea. Three weeks into the tournament, DRX and Gen.G are at the top of the leaderboard. The latter signed the Korean squad in October 2022 after the organization made it into the franchise system for the VCT Pacific League. The team didn't have a stellar showing at VCT LOCK//IN, which makes sense considering it was still relatively new.
In the Pacific League, however, they seem to have found their footing. Although it is true that the team only faced relatively weaker opponents, Rex Regum Qeon and Detonation FocusMe, in the first two weeks, their series against Team Secret definitely put them on the radar as one of the top contenders for the Masters Tokyo seats from the Pacific League.
Gen.G Sylvan shares his thoughts on winning three consecutive matches in VCT 2023: Pacific League
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Sportskeeda Esports' Abhipsito Das had the chance to interview Ko "Sylvan" Young-sub on April 11, 2023, after Gen.G defeated Team Secret. The Valorant athlete spoke about his role shift from Controller to Initiator and their opponent Team Secret among other things.
Disclaimer: The quotes in this article have been translated from Korean.
Q. Gen.G has now won three out of three matches in the VCT Pacific League so far. Who would you say was your most challenging opponents and who were the easiest so far?
Sylvan: The toughest match would have to be the one from today (Team Secret). The easiest so far has been against RRQ.
Q. Team Secret’s wins in the VCT Pacific League so far have been against Talon Esports, who have been extremely out of form, and Paper Rex, who looked quite shaky in Week 2. How would you rank them in the tournament going ahead after today’s game?
Sylvan: I have always known that Team Secret is a strong team. In VCT Pacific, they seem to be performing even better than I anticipated. Even though we won the match today, I believe Team Secret will be able to improve and go up in the standings going forward.
Q. How did you feel about your individual as well as your team’s performance in today’s VCT Pacific series?
Sylvan: I think as a team, even though we made some mistakes, we played well overall.
As for my individual performance, I still have a lot more to show. I still feel a bit of nerves and didn't play as calmly as I can. I can definitely play better.
Q. You moved from being a Controller to primarily playing the Initiator player for the team. Which role do you enjoy playing more?
Sylvan: Even though I have role-swapped to being an Initiator, I still need some time to adjust. As of now, I enjoy playing Controller more, I think I am a little bit better at it. I am still adjusting to my new role.
Q. What would you say goes into good Initiator gameplay?
Sylvan: Personally, I believe that a good Initiator player needs to be able to use their utility very well and respond to what the enemy is doing.
Q. Today’s map pool looked absolutely tailor-made for Gen.G. How much do you think that affected the outcome of today’s match?
Sylvan: After the map veto was finished today, I was 60-70% confident that we had this in the bag.
Q. You have seen Team Secret play Haven in the VCT Pacific League before, while they didn’t have any tape on you guys on Haven. Do you think that impacted the result of the first map?
Sylvan: We definitely studied their Haven VODs a lot. We had a read on their strategies, and they weren’t able to execute their gameplan as well as they wanted to.
Q. What do you think made Gen.G shift from Astra to Omen on Fracture today?
Sylvan: I think there were some aspects that we lacked when we played Astra and we thought that Omen could fill those gaps. That was the reason behind the swap.
Q. If you had to comment on Team Secret’s gameplay today and pick out a couple of things that they did well, what would you say?
Sylvan: I think they have a great IGL and amazing shot-calling. The way they are able to make decisions, without gambling per se, and designing executes in such a way that forces the enemy to respond is a great strength on their part. That is why we struggled a bit on Fracture today.
Q. You have a series of tough matches lined up for the next two weeks in VCT Pacific League, where you will play T1 and DRX. Will that involve any additional practice routines?
Sylvan: Since our goal is to finish at the top of the table, we will definitely be practicing a lot and preparing additional strategies so that we can beat DRX and T1.
